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Intergenerational trauma is transformed into resilience and post traumatic growth in this gripping story of brutal domestic violence, family secrets, and uncommon wisdom. After Yvonne Martinez is taken in by her dying, once-prostitute grandmother, she later learns that her grandmother was long ago trafficked by her own mother in depression-era Utah-a revelation that sends Yvonne on a search for answers ends in healing . . . and in her becoming an activist.
About the author
Yvonne Martinez is a retired labor negotiator/organizer. She has been published by ZyZZyVa, Crab Orchard Review, Labor Notes, and NPR. She also formerly wrote a local labor blog in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her memoir in essays,
Someday Mija, You'll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman was endorsed by Shondaland and covers her childhood in Salt Lake City/South Central LA/Boyle Heights and her work as a labor negotiator/organizer in California and the Pacific Northwest. Her new book
Scabmuggers is based on her experience as a National Fellow of the Harvard Trade Union Program in 1994. Yvonne lives in Berkeley, CA.
Summary
“Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman is a memoir that turns time on its head, circling through terror and joy with eloquence and becoming its own sacrament of resistance.” —Foreword Reviews, 5-star review
At eighteen, Yvonne Martinez flees brutal domestic violence and is taken in by her dying grandmother . . . who used to be a sex worker. Before she dies, her grandmother reveals family secrets and shares her uncommon wisdom. “Someday, Mija,” she tells Yvonne, “you’ll learn the difference between a whore and a working woman.” She also shares disturbing facts about their family’s history—eventually leading Yvonne to discover that her grandmother was trafficked as a child in Depression-era Utah by her own mother, Yvonne’s great-grandmother, and that she was blamed for her own rape.
In the years that follow her grandmother’s passing, Yvonne gets an education and starts a family. As she heals from her own abuse by her mother and stepfather, she becomes an advocate/labor activist. Grounded in her grandmother’s dictum not to whore herself out, she learns to fight for herself and teaches others to do the same—exposing sexual harassment in the labor unions where she works and fighting corruption. Intense but ultimately uplifting, Someday Mija, You’ll Learn the Difference Between a Whore and a Working Woman is a compelling memoir in essays of transforming transgenerational trauma into resilience and post-traumatic growth.
Foreword
AUTHOR HIRED: Crystal Patriarche, BookSparks
300 hours
• National print, broadcast, and online media campaign
• Local print, broadcast, and online media campaign
• Widespread Galley distribution to national, local, and niche markets
• Targeted trade media campaign for reviews and spotlights
• Digital marketing campaign including blog tour
• Branded graphics package including print collateral, social media graphics, email and newsletter banners
• Early reviewer promotions on Goodreads option
• Strategy to position author as an expert
• Book or event tour
